No Cuban, No
Problem:
The Latin Grammys were 100% Cuba-free thanks to the man in the Oval Office
BY BRETT SOKOL, Miami New Times, 9/11/03

Were the Latin Grammys fixed by President Bush?

Based on State Department documents Kulchur has received, that would
certainly appear to be the case. Call it an only-in-Miami moment, one
in which 2004 presidential politics collided head-on with Cuban music.
And Cuba's musicians, who subsequently found themselves watching the
Grammys from across the Florida Straits, weren't the only losers.

Indeed that hoary old issue of cultural exchange with Cuba has
heated up again. Supposedly this was a matter finally laid to rest:
Miami's new mayor, Manny Diaz, is thankfully more concerned with
ridding the city's streets of prostitutes and runaway chickens than
delivering the crowd-pleasing but meaningless anti-Castro harangues
that distinguished his predecessors. The foremost Cuban-exile
organization, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), seemed to
concur that attempting to disrupt a Cuba-inclusive Latin Grammys was
pointless. "The protesters would be competing with Thalia's
ass," CANF executive director Joe Garcia quipped to the Agence
France-Presse.

All together now: The Cubans would get to attend the Latin Grammys,
the usual fringe groups -- from the left and right -- would get to
demonstrate peacefully, and the rest of us would get to go on with our
lives. It was a nice dream.

Estefan and Abaroa's secret plan? To sabotage the U.S. visa process
for the island's ten Latin Grammy-nominated acts, three of whom -- Los
Van Van bandleader Juan Formell, Muñequitos de Matanzas
director Diosdado Ramos, and classical conductor Zenaida Romeu --
actively sought to attend the televised awards show. (Another four
Cubans also sought visas to accompany them.) Official letters of
invitation from LARAS were supposedly never mailed to Cuba's nominees,
dragging out the visa process and leaving Acosta to fume about
"the Miami Mafia" and its "barbarous climate of
intolerance."

An indignant Abaroa retorted to the Associated Press: "That's
a lie. I'm sorry if the post service is a little bit slower in one
country or another, but all of our procedures apply equally to
everybody." Miami's own public officials were too busy
congratulating themselves on a party well-thrown to worry about these
accusations. Having put their best face forward with a protest-free
Latin Grammys, they were duly rewarded by a wave of glowing media
reviews trumpeting the city's newfound spirit of tolerance.

Of course, the rigging of this civic "test" was glossed
over. With Cuba's musicians conveniently failing to secure entry visas
in time for last Wednesday's telecast, most local protesters -- and
any accompanying disorder -- failed to materialize.

So who really kept the Cubans from attending? Was
there a grand conspiracy? Or was it just an honest bureaucratic snafu,
the unfortunate result of lengthened visa background checks in the
wake of 9/11 and the all-too-real threat of radical Islamists
attempting to slip into America?

Forget about invitation letters from LARAS. Last Tuesday State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. government had
waived the need for such letters from Cuba's applicants since the
Latin Grammys -- and its nominees -- were so well known. The true
culprit here is much higher up.

The State Department's responses to the Cuban nominees' visa
applications, copies of which were obtained by Kulchur, offer a
veritable smoking gun. They clearly show that section 212(f) of the
Immigration and Nationality Act, "which prohibits entry into the
United States of any individual whose entry would be detrimental to
the interests of the United States," was invoked by the one
person with the legal authority to do so: President George W. Bush.

In other words,Formell and Ramos were considered by the
president to be security risks. (Romeu was told by the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana her application arrived too late to be processed for
the Grammy show.) Try to discern the logic here: Last year Ramos
toured the United States with his Muñequitos de Matanzas folkloric
group, including a packed concert at Miami Beach's Jackie Gleason
Theater. Formell toured the United States with Los Van Van as recently
as this past June, merely the latest of his countless visits to this
country over the past seven years. Now both men were personas non
grata. "It's Kafka-esque," says Bill Martinez, the
San Francisco-based immigration attorney who handled both these and
last year's visa applications on behalf of the Cuban nominees.

For the past decade Martinez has shepherded hundreds of such
requests for Cuban musicians. Only once, in 1993, have any come back
rejected under section 212(f), a designation given to Cuban government
employees or Communist Party members. He concedes that delays have
become common since the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act
was enacted in May 2002. Jazz pianist Chucho Valdés (who was
also nominated for a Latin Grammy this year but did not apply for a
U.S. visa) missed his Carnegie Hall solo debut in June when his papers
were not approved in time, perhaps because of the fallout from his
signing a public letter defending Castro's crackdown on the dissident
movement. But Valdés did eventually receive his visa, better
late than never, and fly into New York City.

So what changed for Los Van Van's Formell between his own June tour
and last week? Is he now deemed a communist agent and banned from
America, thus nixing a Los Van Van concert scheduled for Key West
on October 10? If so, why exactly did the president wait until the
eve of the Latin Grammys to reclassify Formell as "detrimental to
the interests of the United States"? Says Martinez: "The
timing is unusually suspicious."

Suspiciously political, he might have added. Florida's 400,000
Cuban-exile voters are widely viewed as crucial to re-electing
President Bush. Yet last month saw an unprecedented revolt by much of
the Cuban-exile community's leadership, spearheaded by CANF, that
threatened political retribution come 2004 unless Bush followed
through on his earlier promises to tighten the screws on Castro.
Well-publicized overtures were quickly made to several Democratic
presidential candidates, who were more than happy to seize the
strategic opening: Joseph Lieberman was personally escorted for
a cafecito photo-op through Little Havana's Versailles
restaurant by CANF's Garcia and Mayor Diaz. John Kerry, a vocal
critic of Republican policies toward the Americas since the
Iran-contra days, reversed his call for opening trade with Cuba. Even
that staunchly principled liberal Howard Dean got the message.
He too suddenly flipped his stand on the Cuban embargo, correcting his
earlier position that it should be lifted.

Several sops were thrown Miami's way by the end of August. Federal
indictments of the Cuban military pilots who shot down the Brothers to
the Rescue planes in 1996 were produced, after mysteriously
languishing at the State Department for years. And it was announced
that TV Martí, a pet project of el exilio, would switch to
satellite transmission, and so presumably overcome Cuba's jamming.
Bush administration spokespeople insisted there was no quid pro quo
linking these moves and the ultimatum coming from Miami's Cuban
Americans, a notion dismissed by CANF's Garcia as "an insult to
our intelligence."

"You can smell the fear at the White House,"
Garcia tells Kulchur. "They realized where their [poll] numbers
were, and they knew they had to do something to put out the
fire." But, he adds pointedly, "we're going to keep pressing
for those issues that were promised." One wonders just what else
Garcia feels he was promised. Perhaps a pledge that Bush would bar
Cuba's musicians from the Latin Grammys, avoiding another
protest-filled PR black eye for Miami? "I never asked for it, the
foundation never asked for it, but it's very possible," he says
of Bush's visa vetoes.

An official at the State Department's Office of Cuba Affairs
declined to explain to Kulchur what prompted the president to
reclassify the Latin Grammy-nominated Cubans as 212(f). But it hardly
takes an insider to connect the dots.